Abstract

At the heart of the Christian message lies an invitation to belong. Or perhaps it’s an invitation to recognise that we already belong. We belong with the one in whose image we are made; the one who is both our origin and our final destiny. We believe that the God with whom we belong has sealed that belonging in the events of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Through the Holy Spirit, God has made a home within us, a foretaste of the eternal home we shall have in God. Yet Christian belonging goes beyond the internal and spiritual life. We belong through and with the routines of our lives, the special events we mark out, the people we have around us and the places with which we identify. We are invited to immerse ourselves in these belongings, and to be the means by which others, whether they share our faith or not, are afforded a rich experience of human belonging too.

For me, this is where the imperative for Christians to engage in questions of Housing emerges. What are the things that you and I must have, by way of Housing, if we are to be able to feel that we truly belong? What are the factors in Britain’s Housing situation today, and across the wider world, that enable or inhibit human belonging? And what can we do to impact upon them for good? I’ve tried, in what follows, to set out the main constituents of a home where a household can belong, beginning from the most physical characteristics of the spaces we seek to inhabit.